How Argus engineered a merger

With more than 1,200 biotechnology companies still extant, it's not always intuitively obvious which ones would be the best merger partners. Choices range from focusing on disease areas to technology to simply looking for companies with cash, and outside observers can rarely guess which companies will end up combining.

The three-way merger announced last week between Argus Pharmaceuticals Inc., Triplex Pharmaceutical Corp. and Oncologix Inc. was put together by ARGS, which chose to build a disease-based company focused on infectious diseases and cancer. ...